Walk on alone
by Lamby
Summary: When your soul has been saved by Charles Xavier, what feelings are awoken on his tragic death? Counterpart to Corrinth's Walk through the valley. AU to X3.


Disclaimer: Blaze is mine. I take no credit for the X-Men, Ilehana Xavier or Corrinth's story 'Walk though the Valley'.  
  
A/N: Simply Blaze and Gambit's POV for the above fanfiction masterpiece. If you are confused, go read it. Enjoy is so the wrong word.  
  
Walk on alone  
  
Her heart was often broken, through no fault of her own, the thief. But this was different. Her soul was stolen away from her with the dying breaths of one man. One exceptional man, Charles Xavier.........  
  
Blaze could not move. She had never felt so rooted to the spot, unable to do anything to express her mourning. Scott and Jean could cry, but no tears came to the usually so emotional redhead. Logan could go to her, the Professor's only daughter, and offer her all he had to give her. But Blaze could not, shamed by her own cowardice, her fear of the empty shell in Ilehana's arms.  
  
The empty shell. He'd given up. Just like that he'd yielded all he had and given in, the invincible leader of the X-Men. Gambit wanted to blow the place apart. This wasn't right! Xavier was needed here! How could he just give up!  
  
Give up, Blaze ordered herself. This isn't the place for you. You stayed because he had so much to teach you, about your powers, about who you could be. But with him gone, what's left? An echo of what might have been? What she could have been if he'd taught her to control her powers properly. As if in anger at Blaze's lack of movement, her powers took things into their own hands, seething just under her surface.  
  
This could not be true! Gambit wanted to deny all of it. How could Xavier be dead? Maybe he was just unconscious or somethin'? Vixen could fix him, Remy decreed with child-like confidence, Vixen could fix anybody. But Vixen, Dr Ilehana Xavier, did not move, other than to continue slowly rocking backwards and forwards. Gambit was overtaken with a sudden desire to shake her, make her fix him, but then he knew that neither of them could play their parts.  
  
And so we walk alone. Remy was suddenly aware as Ilehana rose, her father's broken body carried in her arms, of the cold night air that gave life every time he breathed in. Why? Why him and not Charles? Why Charles and not him? The X-Men needed Xavier like they never would the Cajun thief. Dis game stank of cheatin', and Gambit wanted no part of it. He turned his face away, ashamed, as Ilehana passed him with her precious burden.  
  
Blaze could not look away. That empty face, now peaceful with an unnatural light, would haunt her forever. Her powerful memory placed Xavier without instruction in pride of place in her nightmares with her own parents. Her own mother, soft Irish lilt and long eyelashes over beautiful brown eyes. She'd excelled at wrapping presents; young Laura Williams always as amazed at Christmas by the creative designs of the presents under the tree as much as what was inside them. Her mother that had danced whilst cooking, who had flirted with everything that moved, until Blaze had stopped her moving.  
  
Xavier would have liked her father, Blaze knew. Maybe, if the things Nightcrawler said were true, Xavier would have chance to meet her father now, to see where Blaze's thoughtful side came from. A thoughtful side she blocked because thinking too much always lead back to how she had destroyed her family, how she had been unable to stop the tragedy from happening. Trapped and broken and betrayed. Laura could not stop death, and knowing that broke her in half. How many more partings could her broken heart take? Would she always feel so selfish for thinking this way?  
  
Did anybody ever think about those left behind? Gambit wasn't a big believer in religions or superstitions; life's not a game you can count on. It was the longest journey of his life, that one back to the mansion, not entirely sure how Jean and Scott kept the jet going through their unabashed tears. He wished he'd known how deathly serious this night would be, wished he could take back the cheap jokes he'd made earlier. Not that he could remember what they were. He'd have to ask Blaze, she'd remember. Suddenly recalling his teammate, he shot her a sideways glance, trying not to see where Ilehana hid herself with her father's body, searching for any moment of privacy whilst the Wolverine stood watch.  
  
Blaze was pale and empty. Fire raged in her stomach, draining all her attention away from mourning to stop herself from destroying her friends. The man who'd shown her she didn't need to be afraid of her powers was dead, now she battled on alone. She didn't know if she could manage it, knowing with barely a flex of her powers how far away the nearest fuel cell was, how much heat it would take to explode it, how her friends would scream as they burnt alive..........  
  
A hand brushed her own, bringing her out of her reverie however reluctantly that was. The silence of X-Men on the jet was like death itself, broken only by the sobs that fought to escape from the lips of Charles Xavier's family. Those he loved and left behind. Memories of times good and bad, memories now never to be built upon. Dead, empty, gone. Blaze bit her lip, choked back on a swell of hollow guilt, self-hatred, and despair. Why hadn't she been able to help! And now the only other living soul who knew she had a daughter was gone. If Blaze were to forget, or follow Charles into the emptiness of death, the pointlessness of it, no one else would ever know.........  
  
She grasped Gambit's hand tightly. She closed her eyes tighter. Breathing was too hard as she remembered with perfection the exact shine to his eyes, that knowing look the Professor wore so often, that immense sense of pride in her and her progress he often washed over her with. He'd known she was broken; he'd always strived to fix her. And now she walked alone, and felt oh so guilty that her being alone was all she could think about.  
  
No tears fell from Blaze's brown eyes, or Remy's red-on-black ones, until they heard Kurt's soulful prayers on arrival back at the mansion. Full of ceremony, Ilehana preceded them all, baring her father ever so gently as though he were a child in her arms. Kurt's prayer, beautiful like an angel's song, broke down the barriers shock and fear had flooded the X-Men with. The two ex-thieves, souls Xavier had saved, stood on the gangway of the X-Jet and cried tears without sobs as the body of the man they both loved like a father was borne away from them. Hands still entwined, desperate both not to be alone, the words Kurt spoke would haunt them both for the rest of their lives.  
  
".........As I walked through the valley of de Shadow of de dead........." 


End file.
